


feels like summer

by thefudge



Category: Big Mouth (Cartoon), Big Mouth (Netflix)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Bittersweet, Dick Pics, Jay means well, M/M, Making Out, Summer Romance, i'd rate this Teen Plus, they're both 13 going on 14, yeah im walking a fine hopefully respectul line with these kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 10:56:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16240205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: Post 2x10.  Jay gets in touch with Matthew over the summer.





	feels like summer

**Author's Note:**

> man, did anyone get hit by the jay/matthew train or is it just me?

They tell you that the summer before eighth grade is the most radical in terms of change. Friendship bracelets are made and broken, hairdos are experimented with, lip and nose rings are unwisely inserted without proper hygiene, girls across the country get a crush on the twenty-something life-guard at the pool and every boy in America tries to teach their dog the peanut butter trick.

For Matthew, the summer before eighth grade means lying in bed with his feet propped against the wall, scrolling through Tumblr on his phone while Tumblr is also open on his laptop. He is currently having a debate with someone online about _Ocean’s Eight_ and Sandy B and Cate Blanchett’s undeniable chemistry which was never acted on because Hollywood is a fish tank of cowards, when he is interrupted by a ping on WhatsApp from an unknown number.

More out of boredom than anything, he decides to investigate.

_Call Today and Get the Divorce Settlement YOU DESERVE! Guy Bilzerian is YOUR FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE against bitch ex-wives!_

Matthew scoffs with audible disgust. He’s about to block the number when another small text pops up.

_Sorry dude, my dad’s making me send this to everyone!_

Matthew pauses with his fingers over the keys. Is that _Jay_? He doesn’t know how to react. He goes into defense mode.

_How did you get this number?_

The “writing…” sign flashes at the top of the screen for several minutes. Finally, Jay replies.

_What do u mean dog?_

Matthew makes a face. “ _Dog_? Is he serious right now?” he asks no one in particular. He decides to make it harder for him.

 _How did you get my number?_   he types, placing emphasis on “my”.

There is another prolonged pause as Jay keeps typing and typing…and typing…

_Jessi gave it to me._

Matthew tells himself this is only a fluke. Jay is probably still freaking out about their make-out session and wants to be reassured that he’s super straight. Whatever he’s got on his mind is probably gross and related to his penis.

 _Why did you ask for it?_ Matthew pursues.

_Look man, am I bothering u???_

Matthew smiles. The extra question marks reek of insecurity. He’s got half a mind to say, “no, not at all, please keep embarrassing yourself, I love a good show”. But – he’s trying out that new thing where he’s not just gay and mean.

_No, you’re not. What do you want to talk about, Bilzerian?_

This is sufficient encouragement for Jay. He immediately and happily launches into a disgusting story about his pillows.

Now, Matthew had heard the rumors before but to get confirmation from Jay is a whole other  thing. He is both repulsed and fascinated.

 _So im kinda experimenting???_   Jay adds several eggplant emojis to make his point and then a wink for good measure.

Matthew rolls his eyes, but he can’t help the small smile. _Experiment away,_ he types.

_Yeah it’s been fun, i like the guy pillow just as much as the chick pillow, is that normal?? i hope so_

“Oh God,” Matthew mutters in the empty room. “He doesn’t even know he’s bi. What a train wreck.”

But you know what they say about train wrecks…you can't look away. 

_You’re normal, babycakes. Maybe don’t pleasure yourself with every household item you can find but yeah, you’re bi. Mazel tov._

_Thanks man!_ Jay replies with a lot of thumbs up and grinning emojis.

Matthew has to admit he’s mildly impressed that Jay didn’t go back to glorifying his love of boobs while denying his homoerotic leanings. He’s actually…embracing this?

Good for him, he thinks. But he realizes he’s only here to play the teen version of Queer Eye for the Not-So-Straight Guy. Just as he thought, Jay needs him for the logistics of it.

Matthew is already clocking out a little bit, ready to get back to the Tumblr thread, when a new text from Jay stops him dead in his tracks.

_But I wanna make sure, u kno? And i cant just try it on guy pillows_

Matthew sits up in bed. He hates that his whole face is warm.  His stomach is doing little flip-flops. His palms feel sweaty. Ughhh. Jay is a disgusting pig and their one-time tryst was a mistake. He has to remember that.

 _What do you want exactly?_   Matthew types with a stupid knot in his throat.

_U know…_

 

 

The summer before eighth grade goes to hell all because of a soft and misguided _U know…_

 

 

They meet at the arcade of all places. No one goes there anymore unless they’re over 30 and obsessed with a certain brand of nerd culture. None of their acquaintances frequent the place, so it’ll do. It’s weird because they’re acting like their thing is meant to be a secret when half the school saw them make out and no one actually cares, do they?

Well, that’s not entirely true. People still very much care. But in their case, it shouldn’t be a big deal.

Still, the secrecy is sort of exciting. Matthew read somewhere that you never get bored of your lovers if they’re not meant to exist.

Not that Jay is his lover – God, he’d rather die.

It’s just a way to quell boredom. And Matthew has always loved a good experiment.

They play a couple of videogames and Jay is offensively surprised that Matthew knows how to hold a controller. Jay still beats him every time, but he doesn’t mind. Every time Jay wins a game, he pulls Matthew into his lap to give him a noogie.

It wreaks havoc on his hair and he makes sure to voice his displeasure with this inane act of male bonding, but he doesn’t complain when Jay sinks his fingers in his hair and pushes him up against the wall as they lock lips behind the arcade dumpsters. It’s exactly the kind of place they’d show on a gay drama about kids who can’t be free to be who they are. Matthew is sickened with himself for being such a cliché, but – and he hates to admit this – Jay is a fucking good kisser. The dumb ones always are because they’re not at all self-conscious.

And he kind of likes being manhandled. Yikes, what would Sandy B and Cate Blanchett think?

 

 

“Slow down, cowboy…you’re not trying to eat my face, are you?”

Jay pulls back with a shy grin. “S-Sorry. It’s just a lot easier with you.”

Matthew is equally flustered and fighting a blush. “Easier? Should I be offended?”

“Nah, it’s just…with you I don’t have to hold back. With girls it’s different.”

If someone else made this kind of remark, Matthew would be out of there. But it’s Jay, who is dumb and innocent and currently trying to squeeze his ass – _Jesus_.

 _With you, I can be myself._ That’s how Matthew would rephrase it. But he loses track of his thoughts as Jay sticks his tongue in his mouth.

Years from now on, he’ll remember that _Take On Me_ was playing from the outdoor speakers and laugh at the happenstance.

 

 

Jay’s version of boy intimacy is truly awful. He wants him and Matthew to share the same Pepsi can. He wants to hold the can over Matthew’s mouth and pour the fizzy drink down his throat. Or he guzzles the sugary drink in his mouth and then sloppily kisses Matthew, sharing it with him. Spit and sugar and hormones. Matthew eats it up and hates it and can’t believe he likes it.

 

 

Jay plays _Despacito_ like a moron on a loop. Matthew tries to make him sit through a Charli XCX song without much success. Jay asks him why he likes songs about pussy-eating when he’s never gonna be about that life.  Matthew wonders why his first clandestine gay-ship had to be with a tool like him. He wonders if he’ll need therapy when he’s older.  

 

 

Matthew dodges Jay’s invitations. No, he’ll never set a foot inside the Bilzerian house because he doesn’t have a death wish. He knows Jay’s brothers would keep him in the basement, tied up to the ceiling. But he agrees to let Jay come over to his place, mainly because the weather has turned and it’s raining constantly in mid-July. So, making out behind the dumpsters is wetter and smellier than usual.

Matthew’s parents are harmless. They don’t hate their son, don’t resent him for his “alternative path in life”, as they call it.  They mostly ignore him. Benevolently, but still, sometimes it stings. They are focused on the straight elder son, Christopher, who left for college three years before and is currently engaged to one of his female classmates. The family Skype conversations last for hours. Matthew is rarely needed to chip in. He’ll be in the background on his phone, waving at Chris from afar.

It’s a good deal, being half-invisible. So when Matthew hauls Jay up to his room, his mom and dad have nothing to say. He almost wishes they did. He almost wishes they had something against it.

Jay throws himself on the bed with his sneakers on. “Isn’t it sort of cool we both get ignored by our families?” And he asks this with genuine, heartbreaking enthusiasm.

Matthew smiles and it’s the kind of smile he doesn’t offer people too freely. He wants to take it back, almost. He sits down next to Jay and prods him in the ribs. “You. Get down on the floor. The bed is mine.”

“Yes, master,” Jay complies with a laugh and rolls on the carpet.

Of course, from this vantage point it’s very easy for him to stare at Matthew’s crotch.

“Don’t even think about it, you weirdo, we’re still thirteen,” Matthew says with a smirk.

Jay licks his lips. “I wasn’t.”

 

 

They watch _Dude, Where’s My Car?_ because that’s Jay’s favorite movie. Matthew makes a comment about how the boys in the movie are so co-dependent their girlfriends have to be best friends too.

“I mean the hot women in spandex turn out to be the bad guys. It’s …really gay, when you think about it. Everything is.”

Jay hits him in the shoulder. “Don’t ruin this for me, Matt.”

_Matt._

Matthew resents the fact that he can’t really abbreviate Jay’s name.

 

 

Jay does this thing where he cups Matthew’s jaw and runs his fingers right under it, searching for an entry-point, as if he wants to stick his fingers inside his throat. It’s so messy and so goddamn effective. Matthew groans, feeling the pressure building inside him. He gets his first boner – one which wasn’t caused by Henry Cavill.

“Oh my God, I did that!” Jay cries out, incredibly pleased with himself.

Matthew hides his face behind a pillow.

“High-five, dude, we did it!” Jay keeps celebrating.

Of course, he offers to “relieve” Matthew in the best way he can. He makes a sucking motion with his lips.

Matthew pinches the bridge of his nose. “Is this all you can think about?”

“Nah, but _you’re_ definitely thinking it,” Jay grins, pointing at Matthew’s tent.

 

 

Matthew gets a dick pic at the beginning of August. It’s kind of blurry and Jay’s fingers are covering half of his length, but you can’t mistake it for anything else.

He supposes it was inevitable.

 _You know this is kind of illegal, right?_ he texts Jay.

_Our love ain’t illegal, babe. U can get hitched in every state._

Matthew slaps his forehead. The idiot doesn’t understand how child pornography works.

It’s only hours later that he realizes Jay wrote “our love”, like some kind of sociopath.

 

 

The most he gets naked with Jay is when he removes his pajama top and sits in bed with him in his wife-beater. Jay wrestles him down on the mattress, touching and pinching every inch of bare skin. He wants to see “his tits”. Matthew tells him to go fuck himself, which is a phrase he doesn’t use often.

Eventually, Jay stops trying to undress him. He lies on top of Matthew and proceeds to rub himself against the boy’s crotch.

“Since you’re not givin’ me tits.”

Matthew decides that yes, he will need therapy because of this later in life.  But Jay keeps humping him and the friction is delicious, if horrible.

When they both come inside their pajama pants, neither of them says a word. Jay does not burst into his usual congratulatory song.

They breathe hard together, staring at each other like they want to pin the blame on someone else.

They don’t talk for three days afterwards, but it doesn’t become A Thing. It doesn’t become weird. It’s just experimenting.

 

 

They walk Featuring Ludacris together late at night one time and they even hold hands for a few moments. Matthew wonders if he’s faking it, if he’s indulging in these moments because Jay is the one bisexual dude in this dumb town who will kiss him. He doesn’t know. Maybe we’re all faking it all the time because these are the cards we’ve been dealt.

Jay isn’t such a bad card, he decides.

 

 

He writes a long email to the sad old queen in Guy Town. Tells him about how he followed up on his advice and opened up to “people”. Well, opened up to one awful boy who doesn’t shower that much. But it’s something, isn’t it?

_He is not the guy I ever pictured myself with, but he is the one I have. Is this our fate forever? To content ourselves with the scraps at the dinner table? To make-do with mediocre men?_

In response, the old queen writes him, _Don’t go hungry, kid. Eat the scraps. Eat the mediocre men. Just eat._

 

Jay tells him his pillows are mad at him because he doesn’t spend any time with them anymore.  What should he do?

Matthew presses pause to _Capote_ right as Philip Seymour Hoffman starts wheezing.

“Are you asking me if you should _console_ your pillows?”

Jay rubs the back of his neck. “I mean, you know I’d choose you over them, babe.”

“Oh, what a comfort that is to hear.”

“But…could I bring the pillows over? And we could all have like, a hang-out?”

Matthew shudders inwardly. “Absolutely _not_.”

“Pleeeease. Come ooon! If you say yes, I promise we’ll watch _Syndrome, New Jersey_ together.”

“You mean _Synecdoche, New York_?”

“Yeah, that one! And I won’t fall asleep this time.”

Matthew narrows his eyes at him. “I’m not touching your pillows. Not unless they have been bleached.”

Jay puts his arm around him. “But it’s not a no?”

 

 

He plays poker with Jay’s pillows. It’s not strip-poker, thankfully. And it’s not that painful, given the fact that he is making conversation with inanimate objects.

Suzette and Brad find him fascinating and worldly.

Matthew asks them when they first acquired sentience. He feels like this whole thing might break the space-time continuum, but hey, gayer things have happened.

Years later, he’ll deny that pillows ever talked to him or propositioned him sex. He'll tell his therapist it was 2018 and Trump was still president and can a guy be blamed for hallucinating? 

At the end of the evening, Jay stashes the pillows outside Matthew’s bedroom and they don’t watch _Synecdoche, New York_. They watch _Dude, Where’s My Car?_ for the third time.

 

 

Summer ends as it began, with a series of embarrassing changes. Matthew starts fantasizing more often, gets hard at the most inconvenient of times, wants to masturbate even when he doesn’t want to.  He thinks of Jay more than he should. He ignores his Tumblr and stalks Jay’s really nasty Grindr profile. It’s okay though, Jay’s not exploring his bisexuality with anyone else. He knows because Jay tells him all the time. He tells him, _I can only do this with you, you know?_

The world is a scary place. But it won’t always be the summer before eighth grade.

They’ll eventually outgrow each other.

What Matthew hopes he’ll remember is the fact that Jay asked a girl for his phone number and then texted him his dad’s ad as a pretext to talk to him.

It’s the sweetest thing anyone will ever do for him.


End file.
